My potatoes are pitiful this year (I think due to soil deterioration) apart from a couple of disease resistant variety plants that were given to me, and I'm going to have to plant in the same spot again next year due to restricted space. Will growing green manure over the winter act as a substitute for crop rotation, or is there something else I can do to improve soil and discourage disease? I'm quite new to this game, so any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
Green manure will improve your soil but I doubt it will compensate for not rotating. If you're that short of space, why not do your spuds in containers to give your soil a rest? You don't need anything fancy - old compost bags, buckets, bins etc.
Green manure is rather gentle. It wont do any harm if that is what you want to try.
I (I should say we) have grown an excellent crop of spuds from some very rough (fresh) horse manure
It happened when we were trying to recover some poor land to make an additional plot on our site.
We got the chap who owns stables to dump six feet of Stable sweepings there. The following Spring we planted potatoes.
It was an experiment because none of us were sure our hunch would work.
The manure pile was about four feet high by then . The resulting crop was excellent. I think it was Maris which was planted. The local B&Q had reduced them in price to 50p a bag for seed potatoes because they were sprouting everywhere in the net. Some one gambled 50p to see what would happen. He did well.
We all planted our 'extra plants' on that new soil the year after (now down to about 2ft 6") everything was great. The year after that, it was lovely soft soil and we let the plot to a new member who swept all the 'new' soil that was left into raised beds and put in paths around. It is now lovely plot.
Thanks, I think I've got the scope here to try a combination of both methods suggested so far. I feel better now and ready to try again.
Have you considered growing on on the surface under black plastic?
I'm fairly new to this too (had my allotment for 18 months) and have tried to follow the example of experienced potato growers on my allotment site. They don't seem to worry too much about rotation. They dig trenches, fill the bottom of these trenches with several inches of horse or cow manure, put a little soil on top of that and stick the seed potatoes into it. I tried that this year, and have also used some home-made comfrey liquid feed, and the results so far have been excellent. The first earlies (red Duke of York) are lovely and I've started harvesting some sizeable second earlies (Charlotte). The maincrop (Desiree) are flowering nicely.
;)hiya, have a walk around the allotment and offer to take away and burn all there weedings(being carefull not to take any knotweed or other no nos from their gardens ofcourse) when you have a nice pile of that lovely red ashes ,top dress your area with as much red ash as you can and let the weather do the rest for you, regarding crop rotation, you should be ok to plant spuds there again without problems(they grow them year after year in the same feilds in ireland, cheers Andy
Cheers all. I'm going to get these ones out and start making plans for next year, following your much appreciated advice.
Spuds need proper farm yard manure.
My earlies are really pathetic!! They are nice and healthy but there are only a couple per plant :( I am really disappointed. They are Amandine variety.
Still the seconds and mains have great foliage so I am hoping that they will be better. And yes, it was manured ;)
My spuds are looking like being all mouth and no trousers - more foliage than ever before, but the crop so far seems sparse. I think I should have watered during the dry spell.
As I was leaving the allotment just now another plot holder asked me if I had any idea what was wrong with her potatoes, she has just dug them all up as the leaves had turned yellow with brown spots on them and the whole haulm had gone limp and another plot holder had asked her what was wrong with them as her's had done the same. She said they were fine until yesterday but this morning they really looked sick.
Has anyone any ideas what it could be? She said the crop wasn't bad but she would certainly have left them in longer.
Sinbad
Sorry but mine are great! ;)
Quote from: Sinbad7 on June 24, 2008, 14:30:53
As I was leaving the allotment just now another plot holder asked me if I had any idea what was wrong with her potatoes, she has just dug them all up as the leaves had turned yellow with brown spots on them and the whole haulm had gone limp and another plot holder had asked her what was wrong with them as her's had done the same. She said they were fine until yesterday but this morning they really looked sick.
Has anyone any ideas what it could be? She said the crop wasn't bad but she would certainly have left them in longer.
Sinbad
Any chance of a photo? I think the main possibilities are the haulms had come to the end of their natural life or it is so dry they died or it's a disease or someone's been careless with weedkiller. Without wanting to be alarmist it seems a bit early for die back and I don't think any of these usually happen overnight except severe cases of blight.
The reason I'm answering this, although no expert, is that because blight spreads very quickly, just in case, she should at least bag the haulms and better still burn them in a good hot fire.
I have brought home a couple of leaves, as she had bagged them and had them in her boot to take to the tip and I've taken their photo.
I am not sure how to do photo's but will give it a go, although I could put it in my gallery.
Thank you for your help Barnowl, will go and download the photo I took.
Sinbad
Have just added it to my gallery.
Sinbad
Hi, regarding potato problems i can only assume that it is due to unseasonable warm winds which we are having at the moment,also affecting quite a lot of flowering perenials aswell, ive noticed that the wind as also knocked back a large lump of the dreaded knotweed which has found a home on our allotments over the last few years, either that or theres some mysterious chemicles floating around, regards Andy
Hi Andy,
Thanks for your reply but really don't think it is the wind.
She is an experienced gardener and searched her gardening books last night and the nearest she got to identifying the leaves were black rot, but what left her in doubt today was that there was no black on the stem or near the root.
Sinbad
Some of my spud leaves have gone yellow with brown spots, but not the whole plant mainly at the bottom. They are just flowering!
No brown on the stems which suggests blight isn't the answer and the brown on the leaves doesn't look like the pictures I've seen of early blight (it's more spotty). Sorry, no ideas.
Thanks Barnowl for looking.
Maybe she over reacted as everyone is concerned about blight this year.
Sinbad